"
The late Mr. Grahame of Garsock, in Strathearn, whose grandson now "is
laird himsel," used to tell, with great _unction_, some thirty years
ago, a story of a neighbour of his own of a still earlier generation,
Drummond of Keltie, who, as it seems, had employed an itinerant tailor
instead of a metropolitan artist. On one occasion a new pair of
inexpressibles had been made for the laird; they were so tight that,
after waxing hot and red in the attempt to try them on, he _let out_
rather savagely at the tailor, who calmly assured him, "It's the fash'n;
it's jist the fash'n." "Eh, ye haveril, is it the fashion for them _no
to go on_?"
An English gentleman writes to me--"We have all heard much of Scotch
caution, and I met once with an instance of it which I think is worth
recording, and which I tell as strictly original. About 1827, I fell
into conversation, on board of a Stirling steamer, with a well-dressed
middle-aged man, who told me he was a soldier of the 42d, going on
leave. He began to relate the campaigns he had gone through, and
mentioned having been at the siege of St. Sebastian.--'Ah! under Sir
Thomas Graham?' 'Yes, sir; he commanded there.' 'Well,' I said, merely
by way of carrying on the _crack_, 'and what do you think of _him_?'
Instead of answering, he scanned me several times from head to foot,
and from foot to head, and then said, in a tone of the most diplomatic
caution, 'Ye'll perhaps be of the name of Grah'm yersel, sir?' There
could hardly be a better example, either of the circumspection of a real
canny Scot, or of the lingering influence of the old patriarchal
feeling, by which 'A name, a word, makes clansmen vassals to
their lord.
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